


Half-Closed Eyelashes

by mercurochromekid



Category: Frühlings Erwachen | Spring Awakening - Frank Wedekind, Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Historical Fanfiction, Internalized Homophobia, Long Distance Relationship, Long Term Relationship, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Some Fluff, WW1, World War One, alternate universe post canon, german military, hernst, maybe some smut?? idk, mlm, some violence, spring awakening - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-10-08 22:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10397979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercurochromekid/pseuds/mercurochromekid
Summary: Late 1914 Germany- as war begins to ravage the Western Front, Hanschen Rilow enlists to serve his country, leaving his lover behind. He will make it home, he tells himself. He has to. For if he is to return to Ernst, he must finally learn to grow up and battle for what he holds dear. Through the violence of the trenches, he fights: for survival, for his nation, and for love.





	1. Won't You?

Desdemona stared from the blank blue eyes of every poster. Hanschen knew them well. Just flat disks of sky colored paint, but stare long enough, and one could see what he saw. They were precocious. Innocent, but amorous, and seemed to follow the gaze of a person, to draw them in and intoxicate their senses. He knew he shouldn't be staring. He was already late home with the groceries, as he often was, which Ernst hated but which Hanschen could never seem to avoid. He couldn't help it-- there were too many distractions lining every street.  


But he made his feet continue the walk home. He was hungry. Ernst must be, too. As soon as the ration tickets had come in, he'd marched out into the snow to cash them in for scant food staples that- miraculously- his partner always seemed to be able to turn into a palatable feast. Although-- here was another.  


Another line of posters down another street. Curious wallpaper, it seemed to be, that had sprung up almost overnight from the hands of faceless government puppets, employed to paste and paint the message of war on every building.

Willst du mitmachen, Männer?  


KAMPFE für die FREIHEIT,  


KAMPFE für DEUTSCHLAND

The shadowed face of a soldier stared Hanschen down where he stood. It had a straight expression, a gun clasped to his chest, a green military cap atop his head, and those piercing blue eyes. Innocent enough, though the longer he stared, the more he felt strangely compelled to give in and sink to his knees at the feet of this man, willing and ready to follow him anywhere. He hadn't felt this hunger nor this odd blind devotion in a long time.  


Snow fell in heavy flakes that floated down the narrow street. The coal-grimed pavement was covered in it like a soft duvet over an old and uncomfortable mattress. Snowflakes clung to Hanschen's coat and piled up around his feet, which had been motionless for several minutes by this point, and he may very well have stood there for hours had not the snow in his hair melted and run into his eyes, breaking him from his trance.  


He took a shaky breath to gather himself. It puffed from his mouth in a smokestack cloud, and he shivered, the cold air finally getting to him. He walked home with as much speed as he could muster, which wasn't much, feeling… heavy. There were no other words to describe the sudden dread weight in the pit of his stomach.  


_(won't you join up?)  
_

Get it out of your head, he scolded himself, but to little avail. A flurry of emotions as tumultuous as the swirling snow spun deep inside him.  


At last, he fell upon his front door, bringing a rush of cold wind into the house along with him. He shook the snow from his arms and head, balancing the groceries precariously on his hip in order to kick the door closed.  


"There you are," sighed the dark-haired man at the kitchen table. "I was worried."  


"What for, love?" Hanschen asked, setting the bag down and shrugging off his heavy outer garments.  


"The cold, you know how bad it can get. I don't know," Ernst smiled with red cheeks. Hanschen felt his heart soften.  


"I was, ah-- I got held up in the line. I'm fine, really," he smiled in return, pressing a quick kiss to his lover's mouth. So many years had passed,  


_(still so alluring)  
_

but feeling Ernst's lips against his, he felt like a teenager all over again.  
The brunet pulled away after a second, his eyes blue and bright  


"I'll make dinner. We have sausage, no? And bread?"  


Hanschen nodded, collecting himself. "Mhmm. Not much of it, I'm afraid, but as much as the ticket would give us. I'm going to go wash up," he sighed, flashing a weary grin across the room which Ernst returned.  


One must realize the nature of these men's lives. They had been steadfastly by the other's side for years, since they were children. The dawn of a new century and an age of hope had come and gone. Now, they'd taken up residence in a few-roomed house on Katzen Street; it was tall, with two windows, a staircase rapidly dilapidating under its own rot-wood weight, and a slightly slanted construction like a tree being blown sideways by a gust of frigid wind. Inside was as neat of a life as they could keep. Money was often scarce, for though Hanschen had once had no doubt that he'd grow up to be a millionaire, there were no millions to be had anywhere for a man like him and he thus cut his teeth in factories as they came and went. When the roof leaked (which was often) and there were no means to fix it, Ernst put pots and pans and bowls under the drips. Wind rattled the loose windows and settling beams creaked at all hours. They'd learned to live with this odd lullaby-- their arms wrapped around each other, keeping the single bed warm from shared body heat, and love seemed to overshadow the shivering world outside.  


For though they lived under the same roof, and called each other "dear," and touched and thought as only true lovers can, they could not marry. On their census forms:  


Die Residenz- RILOW Hanschen, ROBEL Ernst, der Kammrads.  


Companions. It wasn't the whole truth, but neither was it refutable, so out of fear of the hand of God and the law they kept their mouths closed and kept their love behind closed doors.  


Hanschen splashed a handful of water on his face, startling himself a bit from his odd fugue. He forced himself to smile. It had been a good day, after all-- why spoil it and bring Ernst down with upsetting daydreams? Verschtommer, the current overseer of the factory, was in seemingly good spirits after a visit from his mistress and had given Hanschen and the men of his team a small bonus of two gold-marks apiece. "For you young men, and your hard work!" He'd declared, grinning through his graying beard as he gave out coins like a shabby Sankt Nikolaus. Hanschen planned to surprise Ernst with them during dinner. Perhaps we could get some wool for new winter garments, he mused as he scrubbed the dirt from his hands, or we could fix the front window… No matter. The smile on Ernst's face would be more than enough.  


And so it was-- Ernst's smile was pure light. When he really smiled- not just a passing cursory close-lipped one, but a genuine grin- his face seemed to break in two in the best way to reveal sun shining through. Hanschen was left blinded. The marks glinted brassily and cast bouncing sun spots along the walls as played through Ernst's hands; A flickering oil lamp, the dancing beam of the coin, and his lover's smile. All bright and beautiful.  


Though in the back of Hanschen's mind, just as luminous, were the eyes of Desdemona on the face of the paper soldier, urging him to go to war.  


_(join up, men)  
_

The two went to bed and he was consumed with light and shadows before a weighty, restless sleep fell upon him.


	2. Worthless

A week passed slowly. The small snowstorms let up a little, but as carts and autos grumbled through the streets, the snow was pushed into dirty, half-frozen banks that smelt of coal exhaust. One morning Hanschen saw a group of schoolboys try to make snowballs out of the sludge, but they were left sorely disappointed, and trudged on with their coats closed tight and their bookbags slung over their weary backs. Every night, Ernst stoked the fire in the iron stove downstairs for warmth. It looked like an stern and elderly grandfather with cigar smoke puffing from his downturned mouth.  


This morning was warm, though. A tuft of dark hair poked out of the heavy duvet-- still asleep, Ernst pulled the covers close around him, and Hanschen- taking pity- moved to hold the other in his arms. Ernst roused a bit and hummed sleepily.  


"Your hands are cold," he informed Hanschen, cuddling back against him so they could share the blanket.  


"You'll warm me up, don't worry," he responded. He pressed a soft, tired kiss to his neck and held him close. Ernst smiled.  


Several minutes- or perhaps hours, or years; Hanschen did not know nor care- passed like this. Slants of sun shone in, making the small bedroom a little lighter; a little more like some sort of heaven.  


"Shall we go out later? I want to use those gold marks to buy some new wool," Ernst mumbled, turning over on his back. Hanschen nodded absentmindedly.  


"You need a new jacket," he said. "And I've gotten better at sewing, I promise I won't make a mess of it all this time."  


"I will try to believe you," Ernst hummed, a slightly teasing grin on his face.  


A sudden draft gusted in from a crack in the windowpane and they shivered. "Come here," said Ernst. His arms wrapped around the others neck and pulled him down for a kiss. He tasted like sweet honey.  


The stove heated up leftover meat and half a potato from the night prior, complaining in a low grumble around the hot coals in his mouth. They ate quickly- one learns after a while of eating bland and sparse meals that it's easier to choke down whatever food you have, so you don’t dwell on the small portions or lack of taste. Hanschen set their scraped-clean plates in the sink, donned his coat, helped Ernst into his, and held the door open for them to be off.  


It was a brisk morning. The sky was white with overcast clouds, cut open here and there by the naked branches of beech trees, and a pale blue wind indignantly slapped the faces of anyone who'd dared to go out without a scarf. Frau Ada, the across-the-street neighbor of Hanschen and Ernst, was flapping swaths of laundry out and pressing it into neatly folded squares for delivery to the manor up the hill. Some children in worn leather boots pressed their foreheads to the window of the clockwork repair shop to look at the delicate gold gears of the grandfather timepiece on display. A girl and her mother carried bundles of firewood on their backs. As they walked, Hanschen gripped the gold marks in his pocket and felt a shiver run up his spine at the promise they carried.  


"A hanging, mama, please, why can't we go watch? Just for a few minutes."  


"Mädchen, stop with all that. It's vulgar. We're not going to join in by watching."  


"But mama--"  


From the firewood-laden girl and her mother came this, drifting out of Hanschen and Ernst's earshot as the two pairs walked farther away from each other. The words became a hum in the air that only increased in intensity as they grew closer to the town square, where, indeed, a gallows had sprung up overnight.  


"Tsk," Ernst hissed under his breath, looking away. "People will turn anything into a spectacle."  
Hanschen nodded, but as they had to push through the crowd to get to the textiles shop, they could not help but become roped in to the fervor.  


Clumps of people clamored, spreading rumors amongst themselves and trying to get as close to the stage as possible, though a few peace-keeping soldiers held them off.  


"…Forger, that's what I heard, printing fake paper marks--"  


"No, no, it was murder. Double homicide…"  


"I say let him swing."  


"…Better having people like him off the streets…"  


Ernst was jostled and pushed against Hanschen as the two surrounded by the hordes. Clump- clump- clump, went feet up the gallows steps, a black bag over the head of a man with hands tied behind his back, led by the scruff of his collar by a peace-keeper.  


"Der Manner, Der Frauen, der Mädchen…" shouted a young man in uniform, with a green brimmed hat askew on his head, addressed the crowd. "We're gathered not to make a scandal of a man's death, but to show the consequences of disloyalty and pride!" A few scattered cheers responded.  
Hanschen was transfixed. His hand squeezed Ernst's almost of its own accord.  


"You see, this man," the soldier continued, "claimed to be loyal to the war, and to the German army, but mere days into his home leave, he claimed his desertion to the army and broke into the mayor's private treasury reserve,"  


The crowd yelled dirty epithets. One woman threw an apple core. This teeming buzz of energy snaked in and out of the people, growing in angry intensity with each passing moment. Hanschen's eyes were struck wide open wide and his feet were rooted to the ground.  


"And he stole fifteen pounds worth of gold marks! He really believed he could rob the government blind and get away free. Well, Manner, look at the fruits of his efforts!"  


The soldier grabbed a sack and upended its contents onto the stage. Some hands lurched forward to grab at the small glinting marks that spilled from it, but--  


"Take all you want. These marks are useless!" A strange tide of confusion and anger ebbed and crashed onto the crowd. "Inflation has made them worthless. Inflation- caused by the malice of the Triple Entente!"  


Hanschen shook his head. He must have misheard- worthless?  


"Blame the Allies! Blame the enemy of the state, because these gold marks- for which a man will hang- are now worth nothing! They are just costume jewelry!" Shouts rose up from the crowd and swirled heavily around the soldier and the convict. Sobs were now heaving from his chest, though his face was masked by the bag, and the choking sound was lost amid the clamor of people yelling, cursing, throwing coins, chanting… The ground buzzed with each moment as uninhibited anger of the populace mounted into a towering battering ram of rage.  


"We are engaged in a battle for our nation. Fight back, Manner!" yelled the soldier.  


The gallows floor split in two.  


_(won't you join up, men)_  
_(fight for your freedom)_  


With a whip-snap of the rope, the man fell.  


"Fight for your Germany!"  


His jerking feet dangled several feet above the cold ground.  


Hanschen, after a minute, turned to Ernst with wide, drifting eyes.  


"I'm going to enlist. I'm going to go fight."  


"…Hansy, what?"  


"I'm going to fight, Ernst, for the war."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> school is a mess and i am full of stress so hooray for that... also, a couple of neat artistic endeavors have rendered my schedule quite full but i'm still writing. enjoy!


	3. Head In The Clouds

A distracted pragmatist, Ernst kept thinking, was no fit for the battlefield of the front.

This phrase banged around in his head for days after Hanschen had left. Though he was no scholar- in fact, he'd done rather poorly in school- he knew what pragmatism was, and knew that his partner was very much so one. One with their feet on the ground who dealt in absolutes and truths and logic: add the distracted air of a man who was careless and optimistic to the point of being blind to what was right in front of him, and that was his Hanschen.

Another word he knew, though, too, was inexorability-- the certainess of something to occur. Inexorable was the fact that this was coming, sooner or later. Not just that Hanschen's dual rhetoric of ethos/logos combined with his wanderlust would get the better of him someday, but that with the military draft rolling out, one of them would be enlisted to fight. Jeder verfügbare Mann muss dienen, read the government-stamped poster that crowded the streets along with color propogandist images. Every available man must serve. Being two to a house as they were the draft would have called for one of them to go off to serve. As it was, with Hanschen gone, Ernst was left in their crooked house to stoke the fire alone, listening to the soft plink of the rain and lonely whispering sobs of the wind.

He couldn't seem to keep his mind off of it for long.

Hanschen had always been an odd juxtaposition of being grounded with his head in the clouds. He thought rationally and often saw the cynical nature of things that others couldn't, but saw himself as removed from this harsh reality. Long ago, Ernst could remember, he talked casually about the monument to God he would build when he was a millionaire; his daydreams were rooted in the realistic, but they distracted him, and he would rather let the system work for him than exert effort himself. Ernst was the opposite;

_(such a sentimentalist)  
_

his dreams were quite simple and contained, his head full of irrational worries, his manner fairly mild, his voice soft and his hands not afraid to work. Together they formed a complementary and cohesive unit. When Ernst hesitated, Hanschen would encourage, and when Hanschen became absorbed inside himself, Ernst could pull him back to earth.

A distracted pragmatist was no fit for the battlefield of the front.

Hanschen was generally submissive, but only to certain authority, and only to a specific limit, at which point he would sit back and question-- there is no time for questioning in the line of fire.

_(oh, you're gonna bruise too)  
_

Ernst sat in front of the grumpy metal stove expelling cigar-like puffs of smoke. It frowned at him, seeming to say Get it together, young man. You're worrying about things that don't matter again.

Because of course Hanschen could handle himself. He was strong, after all, and very smart, and no matter the shortcomings here and there… Well, no one is without fault. He would be fine.

***

Five days prior: Hanschen had left. He signed a roster in the hands of a soldier, and was given a time to meet a truck that would take them for training and two days to say goodbye.

That night Ernst had wept. Hanschen had held him, trying to offer comfort, but he knew he couldn't make everything alright. He was not blind to the risks. This was war, after all, and not every man makes it back home alive.

But he whispered reassuring lies and soft, sweet nothings into Ernst's ears as he wept. "Don't worry, my love. I'm going to be fine."

"You don't know that," came the muffled and teary reply. Hanschen sighed.

"Well… no. But you will be here, and no matter what happens, I'm going to come back to you. I'm going to fight to keep you safe."

"Even if that means you have to die?"

Hanschen tilted Ernst's head up to his and kissed him, slow and deep. "I'd die a million times over if it meant you could live."

Ernst shut his eyes tight. A few stray tears rolled down his cheeks. "I love you," he said softly.

_(and so you should)_

"I love you, too."

But now, as he sat alone by the stove wrapped in a blanket and wearing a gloomy frown, those words seemed miles and miles away-- as far as Hanschen was now.

He would make it home. He would be fine.

_(no fit for the battlefield)_

No. 

He had to be fine.

Ernst did not know if he could handle him not being fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahh! people are reading this. that's slightly terrifying. and exciting. both at once. i hope i'm writing something worthwhile here, and that you guys keep consuming these thoughts from my brain and enjoying them. much love


	4. Like Some Test

One might think Hanschen would be used to the cold, but alas, not so.

He was kneeling on the frozen earth- which, he thought, must be dirtying his brand new khaki green uniform trousers- with a rifle clenched in his chapped fingers, the sight aimed at a sandbag target many yards away. The wind seemed to be turning his blood to ice and neither it nor the drill sergeant seemed to be relenting anytime soon.

"Fire!" the sergeant shouted. Shell-sharp bangs echoed from the line of men behind the makeshift barricade.

Hanschen gritted his teeth at the kickback, and another shiver went through him. He'd shot right through the bag, where a stomach would be on a person-- No, not person, he quickly corrected himself. The enemy. Where the stomach would be on the enemy.

If he allowed himself to disassociate from the vascularity of bullet ripping through flesh, he could almost feel proud of himself for the shot. Sand seeped out of the burlap bag like so much blood might.

***

That night was calm.

_(those bells, so peaceful)_

Hanschen and some of the other men were sitting under the stars outside the mess house, and some lingering smells of sausage and Kornerbbrot wafted out. They were relatively well fed, for the most part, which had come as a pleasant shock to him; thoughts of the front usually conjured in his mind the image of the scarred, malnourished soldier. To be fair, they were not yet at the front- and, in fact, were not scheduled to depart for it for some time- and so Hanschen reveled in the luxury of having meals provided for him three times a day.

"I heard they will make us shine our shoes before going on training marches, and then again when we come back," said Bruno, a younger recruit. Cowlicks of bright blond hair fell into his eyes.

"That's schichte, don't worry," laughed a tall man called Fiete. He had fought before, against the Boxer Rebellion and with the Adamawa Campaign, and lived to tell the tales of foreign fronts. He could have been a general by now, he certainly had the experience-- but when asked he had turned it down. "I do not want to make mistakes in leading that lead to men dying. I would rather be given a bayonet and told who to run at with it. You see," he had said, while telling the men this over a bonfire late in their first week of training, "a man learns who he is, especially out here. He learns what he is good at. You have to, in order to stay alive. And I? I'm good at killing."

Hanschen was in awe of this man.

"They will make you cut that hair off, though, Bruno," quipped Anselm, who was carving something out of a stick with his pocketknife. "It would get in your eyes in battle and you might go and shoot your own foot off." Fiete laughed again and nodded in agreement. Bruno frowned sullenly.

"You'll look like Hanschen, ah?" This came from Kay. Hanschen, who had been staring absentmindedly up at the stars overhead, faced the men again and laughed.

"I suppose," he said with a grin. "I've got dirt under my fingernails, and scuffs on my boots, but if I can keep my hair how it is I'll always feel at least a little clean." He did take great pride in keeping his blond coif shining and smooth against his head. Dirt was inevitable, of course, and he did mourn warm water and strong soap, but with the image of a soldier of the front came the thoughts of mud streaks, grass stains, dust, and blood of battle.

Fiete snorted. "Huh. Good luck, kinder," his voice dripping with the condescension of a father trying to guide his petulant son. Though truth be told he was a father for some out here-- Bruno especially.

Bruno had been led to enlist right after his promotion from secondary school. As he'd said, the world is a large and scary place, but perhaps taking up the noble cross and going off to live the glorious life of a soldier would give him purpose. He reminded Hanschen of Ernst as a young man. Now that the men were being run through the ringer of training, Bruno was having doubts. There seemed to be no glory here; blood is simply blood, red as fire and warm as wine. He could not seem to stomach it. Fear and anxiety were written all over his face when Fiete or Christoph or Josef would talk casually about the chaos they'd lived through. Fiete, though, would silence them, and take Bruno under his arm in a show of affection shrouded in carefully crafted masculinity, or else he'd offer words of comfort and realism. The boy was good with a gun, and was fast-- Hanschen thought he'd make it home in one piece if he could keep his wits about him.

Hanschen smiled wryly at Fiete. "I know, I know. I am counting on the helmets to keep my hair safe, along with my skull," he said, and some laughed. They were relaxed out here, beneath the glinting sky. It felt like nothing evil could touch them.

"Goose grease, that's what you use," spoke up Josef, who was called Jo. "Keeps the hair out of your eyes. It's no Dapper Dan, but not half bad, either." Hanschen nodded gratefully and flashed the man a light smile.

A bugle sounded in the distance. Somewhere not too far off in the night, a train car was rattling to a stop, and a gaggle of fresh recruits were busting the seams to get out. Not even a month ago- how long it seemed, but how short!- Hanschen had been one of them; a kit bag slung over his shoulder, a clean uniform, no more personal commodities. They would be here shortly to join the training masses. "Another batch, another nest of chicks underfoot to deal with," sighed Werner, ever the bitter one. Hanschen paid him no mind. He relished in the crowds on the field and in the mess hall. It made him feel alive-- if he was part of a machine, at least he was surrounded by his countrymen in the electric engine surge of anticipation, fear, and bloodlust.

"Attention! On your feet. der Schlafen, Manner!" echoed a voice. Sieger. "Off to the barracks!" Though he appeared strict- as he must, being the lieutenant at the reigns of the training camp- he was the type to look out for the men under his command. The group who had been lounging by the mess hall rose dizzily to their feet, drunk on the pure country night air, and half-walked, half-shuffled like odd ducklings to the soldier's sleeping quarters in the barracks.

And it was there, as Hanschen was stripping off his outer shirt and lining up his boots at the end of his lower-bunk cot, that he saw him: an odd familiar face, attached to the similarly familiar body sitting on the bed opposite.

"Rilow?"

Slowly, he turned to face the other man. So it was him. He could not forget that voice.

"Hanschen, von Gott, so it is!" cried the tenor silk voice of Bobby Maler.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi hello I'm stressed as hell but I have so many ideas for this I'm pretty jazzed :0 as always, enjoy and please correct my German!   
> (also i couldn't resist the Pippin reference in there whoops lmao)


	5. Chapter 5

"Bobby," Hanschen spoke finally, cracking a smile. "You're here, ah? This camp?"

"…Robert. It's Robert, and yes, I am. Just got here today," he laughed a bit. "'Bobby' sounds like some naïve schoolboy. We're men now, eh? Proper soldiers, and all."

"You _were_ a naïve schoolboy. How long has it been? Fifteen, twenty years?"

"It must be." Robert smiled. "You moved on to secondary school whilst I dropped out." Hanschen nodded, sitting down on his bunk and undoing the remaining buttons of his outer shirt.

"Where did you go off to, anyways? We always wondered. One day you were there, fumbling over Latin like always, and the next day gone."

He stopped for a second. Like Moritz.

_(litera multum ille iactus unonis ob)_

Softly, Robert spoke, seeming to notice the sudden downward shift in Hanschen's expression. "You wouldn't believe it, but the artist's commune. You remember it? I needed to get out of that drudgery. What use was Homer or the Hops-Bourges to me? So I left-- it was so nice there. I could be myself." He paused momentarily and cast his gaze to the floor as if in nervous shame. "Do you know what I mean?"

After a second Hanschen nodded with the realization. "Ah," was all he said, for he did know. His father had always told him to stay away from those artists. They're not real men, was what he'd said, the underlying but never-spoken message being that he was afraid Hanschen would be seduced into the gay art cult. If he could only see Ernst and I now, Hanschen thought wryly. "I know what you mean. I always had a feeling, I must admit," he said with a smile, trying to convey that he wasn't about to judge nor recoil in fear. Robert turned red and did a poor job of hiding the blush behind his hands.

Before he could speak up, though, some faceless guard at the end of the barrack pounded a fist against the wall. Like dominoes the dim overhead lights switched off and the two were plunged into darkness.

"I think we're meant to sleep," Robert whispered. Though he could not see, he could hear the smile on his face in his voice.

"Rest up for drills tomorrow," Hanschen agreed with a light smirk. Something about encountering this ghost from his childhood was seeming to bring out the flirt in him that hadn't lived large since he was young.

He laid back on his cot and tugged the thin blanket around him. Tomorrow would be rough, and probably cold again. No amount of sleep could possibly be too much. Crickets and frogs cavorted with mellow chirps in the woods outside, lulling Hanschen to sleep.

 

* * *

 

"Line! Line! Line! Let's go!" The men were berated as they trudged on. "The French don't wait for you to get your gun reloaded! Private, move it, come now!"

Behind him, Anselm muttered just loud enough for Hanschen to hear: "The British, though, they're real patient about it." He couldn't help but smile.

Ekkehardt hollered behind him at the line of soldiers. "Knees up! Up, Rilow!" This was difficult as Hanschen's boots were heavy and waterlogged with rain. They were marching, as they had been for hours now, in the chilly ozone storm weather, and the downpour had turned the fields to soup. They could barely feel their fingers on their rifles.

He could not help but think of Ernst and feel a little homesick. Whenever there'd been a rainstorm like this at home, the brunet man had made hot stew for them with whatever scraps they had around the kitchen, and they'd eat it while wrapped in their duvet in front of the grandfather stove. The rain outside was always a comforting white noise, and they'd talk softly and lovingly over its whispers outside and plinks in the pans under the leaks in the roof above. Now, though, as the rain came down in cold sheets and the wind blew wet leaves into Hanschen's face, those quiet and warm nights seemed a thousand years ago and a thousand miles away.

Anselm cursed under his breath behind Hanschen. "It's been hours, my feet are numb, damnit."

"Fire! Target, to the left! Fire!" shouted the drill sergeant suddenly. In the pouring mess of rain, they squinted at the targets set up in a clearing of the woods, pulling blindly at triggers to aim bullets through the rainstorm. Bangs echoed around the wet forest.

"Keep on, now. March! Aim better at the next one!" Hanschen sighed. His shot had missed miserably, firing into a bush. Some fighter he'd be. Are my eyes going? He wondered, for despite the rain obscuring his vision, it felt like he was blind to all but the red X of the target-- and even that he could not hit. He smeared some mud from his face with the back of his free hand and lurched forward in the line of soldiers. I'm not young anymore, was all he could think.

What a miserable thought.

Hours later, as they sat under a tarp with bitter and watered-down coffee gazing absently out at the now-drizzles of rain over the fields, he lamented this to some of the others. "I feel so incredibly old," he said, trying to hide his self-pity but not doing a very good job. "There's wrinkles around my eyes, I can see them!" For emphasis he crinkled his eyes shut and pointed, all too melodramatically.

"Jungen…" said Fiete, sighing with a roll of his eyes, "If you are old, then I am ancient. You're, what-- in your thirties?" Hanschen nodded. "Then stop your moaning!" The older man laughed. "Just wait, kinder. You may not be as young as Bruno-" Bruno pouted playfully- "but you'll have your day in the sun yet. Don't get hung up in a mid-life crisis, or you may lose your head. No helmet can protect against that," he said, taking a sip from his tin mug.

Hanschen nodded. He was right, of course. The more he felt sorry for himself the more he'd sink into gross despair, wherein he'd wallow and feel desperately lonely, which was incredibly unbecoming. It certainly wasn't the attitude of a soldier and was by no stretch of the imagination attractive.

Absently, he wondered, does aging give one some sort of divine wisdom? Or was that just Fiete's incomprehensible mind?

For the first time it occurred to him with an encroaching sense of heavy dread that he may not live to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys, sorry it's been so long! i got out of school barely two weeks ago and just got a laptop of my own for writing. but here i am.   
> also, unapologetic plug: if any of y'all happen to like Be More Chill I've been writing some Michael/Jeremy oneshots if you wanna check em out :0   
> anyways. as always much love and enjoy!

**Author's Note:**

> ahh ! this is the first time i've posted a fic to ao3 and i'm hyped. i highly doubt that my AP World History teacher ever thought that him teaching us about world war one in detail would ever inspire one of his students to write a slow-burn historical fanfiction but here we are. i don't know how often i'll be able to write because of this and that, school, etc. but i'll do my best to upload frequently, if not consistently. 
> 
> also; my grasp of German is remedial at best, so if i've made any mistakes please let me know!


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